EVANSTON-It’s fitting that Northwestern clinched the Big Ten West tile on the road against Iowa last Saturday. Because the Wildcats have been at home on the road all season.

The win gave Northwestern a perfect 4-0 mark away from Evanston this year and set a program record with seven straight road wins over the last two seasons.

To put that in perspective, that’s longer than the road winning streaks of any of the top four schools in the College Football Playoff rankings: No 1 Alabama has won four straight, No. 2 Clemson six, and No. 3 Notre Dame and No. 4 Michigan three apiece.

And the Wildcats didn’t gobble up any non-conference cupcakes on their way to the record, either. All seven games were in the Big Ten. Their victims: Maryland, Nebraska and Illinois in 2017, and Purdue, No. 20 Michigan State, Rutgers and Iowa so far this year. Northwestern will get a chance to extend the record to eight at Minnesota on Saturday.

It’s an impressive feat, maybe the most impressive aspect of Northwestern’s march to the West division crown.

Just don’t ask the Wildcats to explain it.

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” said superback Cameron Green. “We just want to go and win every game. That’s our mentality, to go 1-0 every week. It’s not like we put any more pressure on it than we do playing at home.”

Many football teams take an “us against the world” mentality when playing on the road. The old cliché is a college coach barking out that “the only people in the world who think we can win this game are in this locker room,” or some other time-worn axiom.

But Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald doesn’t go that direction. Even though he’s an emotional coach on the sidelines, he’s more about preparation and normally stays away from sentimentality or motivational ploys.

“We’re a pretty focused group, but we’re not overly serious,” said Fitzgerald. “We trust in our process to get ready. When we travel, we travel first-class, but we’re traveling on a business trip to go win a game. We don’t deviate a whole lot in what we do or the way we do it – this week on the road, next week at home.”

Still, the fact remains that the Wildcats are 2-4 at Ryan Field and 4-0 away from it. There must be something in these players that allows them to be at their best when they’re away from all the creature comforts of home.

“We know going into certain places that they’re going to be tough crowds and certain things,” explained Green, a redshirt junior who has quite a few road trips behind him. “We just focus on us, which is very important.”

Fitzgerald thinks that trusting that preparation process during the week is the reason that they’ve been so good in hostile environments on Saturdays. The Wildcats just do their jobs as they’ve been trained all week – even if there are more than 60,000 people in the stands rooting against them, as there was on Saturday in Iowa City.

“We just trust in that plan,” he said. “This year, some of the road challenges we’ve had, none better than the one we had on Saturday at Kinnick. That was just an awesome environment for college football and I thought our guys handled it really, really well.”

His team’s record certainly backs him up.

After Jeremy Larkin was forced to retire after the Akron game in Week 3, Northwestern’s running game went AWOL. Over the next three games, the Wildcats rushed for a grand total of 68 yards, an anemic 22.7 yards per game.

So Clayton Thorson took over in the passing game. In those same three games, against Michigan, Michigan State and Nebraska, he threw for 334 yards per game to carry the offense. He threw for a prolific 828 yards in wins over the Spartans and Huskers. If the Wildcats couldn’t run the ball, at least they could sling it around with a four-year starter behind center.

Then, Northwestern found a spark with Isaiah Bowser against Rutgers in Week 7, and the running game took off. Over the last four weeks, in wins over Rutgers, Wisconsin and Iowa, and a loss to Notre Dame, the Wildcats ran for a total of 602 yards, or 150.4 yards per game, and eight TDs. Bowser has run for 120.8 yards per game during this span.

But while the running game has flowed, the passing game has ebbed. The last four weeks have seen the Wildcats’ lowest four passing outputs of the season, hitting rock bottom with 122 yards against Iowa on Saturday. So now, Northwestern’s offense has done a 180, gaining more yardage per game over the last four weeks on the ground (150.4) than in the air (135).

Look at Thorson’s numbers. In games four through six, while the running game was floundering, he completed 88 of 138 passes (63.8 percent) for 1,002 yards, with six touchdowns and four interceptions. Over the last four games, with a running game to complement him, he has been just 65 for 113 (57.5 percent) for 540 yards, with three touchdowns and five picks. So his per game average went from 334 yards to 135, his completion percentage dropped 6.3 points and his TD-to-INT ratio went from plus-two to minus-two.

When asked about Thorson’s statistics on Monday, Fitzgerald had his typical response.

“Stats are for losers,” he said, pointing out that the Wildcats have won three of those four games. “Those are the only stats I care about.”

The dip in numbers aren’t all Thorson’s doing, of course. Northwestern offensive coordinator Mick McCall has been calling more runs, going with what works. Over the last four weeks, the Wildcats are averaging 45.5 runs and 28.3 passes per game. On Saturday, Bowser got career highs of 31 carries and 165 yards. The team has been winning with stellar defense and a strong running game, a game plan that is better suited to November football in the Big Ten.

But another reason is that Thorson and the passing game haven’t been very productive. The QB’s three worst efficiency ratings of the season came against Wisconsin, Rutgers and Iowa (94.43, 87.06 and 81.83, respectively). He completed a season-low 50 percent of his passes against both Rutgers and Iowa. Northwestern has also allowed more sacks (26) than any team in the Big Ten.

The bottom line is that the Wildcats are winning, so they will continue to go with what's working. But they would be a lot more dangerous offensively if they could get the running game and passing games going at the same time.